Intel Corp. earlier this week demonstrated the industry’s first fully-patterned 450mm wafer at an event. The demonstration was not accompanied by any significant announcements and was meant to just show the progress with transition to next-generation wafers to a closed circle of the industry participants.

At the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) this week Intel demonstrated a 450mm wafer that is fully patterned for the first time. This wafer was created after intense collaboration which was necessary between Intel and various suppliers, three of whom are Sumco, Dainippon Printing and Molecular Imprints, according to Intel.

“It is an important step forward and it indicates that there will soon be substantial volume of patterned test wafers for use by suppliers in developing their 450mm tools,” explained Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel during a conversation with X-bit labs.

No public details about the wafer have been revealed officially. A report claims that Molecular Impints’s Jet and Flash (J-Fil) imprint lithography technology has demonstrated 24-nm patterning with line edge roughness of less than 2nm to 3sigma and critical dimension uniformity to 1.2nm 3sigma and offers the prospect of 10nm patterning with single-step process.

Intel is projected to start manufacturing microprocessors, system-on-chip products and other chips on 450mm wafers sometimes from 2015 and onwards.

Discussion

All these press releases remind me of GM's statements of about 6 to 7 years ago. Ford echoed them and so did the others. Who will bail out the companies with the aged and old management this time?
Unfortunately, this seems to happen to all companies, management renewal is a painful thing. Just ask AMD.

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2.

This reminds you of GM in 2006? Really? Why? What do you mean 'bail out'? Intel 2013 is not GM/Ford 2007. They are making money hand over fist - at 58-60% gross margins. GM never even came close to that number in the last 30 years. You can make any argument you want about AMD - but at no point in the last 6-7 years has AMD's business and financial model even approached that of Intel. Don't make the mistake of putting these two semi companies in the same box - they are worlds apart in financial metrics.

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3.

Congratulations to Intel, Dainippon, Sumco and MI. Fantastic progress so far - and we hope there will be even more progress to show at the Fall IDF this year. Getting CD uniformity down to 1.2nm 3-sigma across a 450mm wafer is very good indeed.

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Not too smart, this one. Being the first is always the best because then you have time to refine the technology while others are still trying to get it to work at all.

Plus I don't know how you can see broken edges. Even if there were any, I'd bet it's from being handled by humans. Silicon isn't touched by humans at all in the fab itself in any step of the manufacturing and testing process.

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5.

This is an important step... a patterned wafer is fundamental to the equipment manufactuers--they must have a patterned wafer to work with in development the rest of the (many) tools required. Since EUV and/or quad-patterned (optical) lithography isn't 450mm ready and won't be for some time, nano-imprint is saving the day.

But make no mistake, there's still a long haul ahead to get to a real integrated circuit, let alone to achieve high volume manufacturing. This is also a big win for Molecular Imprints. An article on the impact of this announcement can be found at the industry's website tracking 450mm developments:http://450mm.com/?p=1235